


Vitriol

by pinstripedJackalope



Category: The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, One Kiss, Walkers, how angry can one guy be, night on the long walk, some good swearing, that first night, the long walk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What may have happened during the Long Walk between a certain prickly boy and one long dead president.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vitriol

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Aurora, or goddessofthedawn.tumblr.com! Happy holidays!

            Collie Parker wasn’t looking for romance when he filled out the exam that would deem him competent enough to walk the long walk.  He wasn’t looking for hands to hold or hearts to break as he took his number from the Major.  There was no real lust for a person to hold when he took his first steps toward his death, and he was quite all right with that.  Boys, girls... all of them came and went right on their way, on a whim, and he was done dealing with the muck of it.  Humans were all defunct, broken machines, and there was no one out there that he was willing to try to fix.  Anyone who needed words of love to get them through the night could take the nearest Maine lobster and fuck themselves creatively with a pinching claw. 

            It was with as many spikes as he could brandish, a veritable coating of spears that would make a porcupine jealous, that Collie started walking.

            Spikes were his forte.  Growing up in Joliet had been a bitch and a half--no one grew up soft there, not like the fucking hicks up north.  He became a man at fourteen, working at his dad’s mechanic shop dawn to dusk and drinking a beer with his elder brother when they punched their cards.  If he’d complained about the taste of the brew, he would’ve been snubbed nose-first into the concrete right there, but he hadn’t complained.  That’s just how he went.  He was the kind of guy that learned fast, melted right into the shop-talk, lipped away right alongside the rest of them, and why not?  He damn well deserved a spot among them.  He’d fought for it.  He’d fought, and he’d won.  There was no charming over Collie Goddamn Parker, because he’d earned each and every barb that adorned his back.

            He wasn’t looking for romance... but that didn’t stop him from looking in general.  Tits or ass, pecks or package, he’d long ago come to the conclusion that all of it was fine to gander at.  And if he just happened to gander a boy, and that boy got right pissed at him, all the better.  He owed no one anything, not even peace of mind on a funeral march like this one.  If they didn’t like it, they could fuck off.  There was plenty of space on the great placid frontier that was Maine for them to go and fuck themselves silly. 

            The boy in question was a pretty fine specimen, though, no doubt about it.  He’d watch this one fuck himself all day.  He was one of long limbs, seventeen years or so with a finely-maturing face that would have had him covered in girls back in Illinois if he’d had one of three things: money, a sweet ride, or enough brains to get by with neither.  His eyes were obstinate--he wasn’t about to let anything walk him into the ground, and that was what really dragged Collie in.  He wanted to drink in that self-assured grin.  He wanted to fuck that boy senseless.  Number  2, what a catch you must have been.  Did girls swoon for you, Mister 2?

            He had been staring at the boy’s long legs for long enough that he’d started to forget about the smarting tendons at the back of his heels, the damnable Maine weather, and even the broil of anger back in his mind that never seemed to quit.  The girls on the side of the road were nice--fine tits, the lot of them, any tits were pretty fine tits--but they just didn’t feel real the same way that this kid did.  They were like looking at cuts of meat behind the glass at the store when you only had a buck in your pocket, while this boy was... well, something else.  Collie hadn’t grown in the backburner of Illinois to write poetry about some tasty boy he happened upon once in his damn life.

            Then the boy talked to him, and though he’d decided long before he even began walking that he wasn’t going to give any of these guys the time of day, he couldn’t help but ease back the spikes just enough.

            The boy was named Abraham--he was hanging around with the Maine boy and the fucking hicks, and he’d been getting more and more pissed the longer Collie stared at his back.  “You a dog, Collie Parker, or just named after one?” were the first words that Collie heard from that boy’s pretty mouth that were directed right at him, and at the sound he let out the kind of grin that his older brother had taught him to reel in the ladies.

            “I’m a son of a bitch--I’ll let you decide.”

            Abraham grunted, glaring at the twilight around them.  “You’re a bitch yourself, Parker.  Get off my ass.”

            Collie backed off, and got himself lost in the knots of walkers.  Damn, but was he a sucker for the sweet boys.  All the more reason to wear the spikes like a jacket.  No reason to fall, not tonight, not tomorrow.

            He was going in for the long haul, and he intended to enjoy every last aching minute of it.

 

            He came to the conclusion that he was a down and out idiot when that first night on the road came around.

            Things got muddled during the night.  It was something he’d known ever since he was really little, and thought he’d tried to get himself past it for years, every time the sun came down he knew a little less and feared a little more.  And that night was, no doubt, the _longest_ night he’d ever lived through.  Nearing three-quarters of one hundred miles on his feet, on his aching legs and chaffing shoes and he thought about how his brother must have walked this very road once and he was nearly swallowing back the anger to keep it inside, keep it back, because he didn’t really want to hurt anyone, not really, he wasn’t a sadist like that when he really got down to the bones of it--

            He snapped out of a half-doze with a scream and a snarl ready on his lips, reminiscent of the nightmares he used to have every night imagining his brother buying his ticket, but he got himself under control right quick.  He’d nearly tripped right over another walker in his trance, and under the wicked northern skies he couldn’t even bring himself to snap, to raise his spikes, and tell them where to stuff it.  He could only right himself, teeth grinding themselves down.  He had to wait out the shivers that coursed through him from the head down.

            “You’re looking a bit peaky, Parker,” said a voice in the night.

            Collie swallowed hard against the memories in his own traitorous mind, bringing his gaze up.  He’d stumbled right up against Abraham, his nose nearly rubbing against the big number 2 on the kids back.  He could only see it because he was about two inches away.  “I’ve got a crevice you can cram it,” he said.  The words crawled out of his mouth like chittering, dying animals, cut off by the snap of his teeth.

            “That was weak,” Abraham said, his vocal chords straining slightly as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to disrupt the night by talking normally.  “Try harder and maybe I’ll give you an E for effort.”

            He tried--he honestly did.  He was opening his mouth to snap anything that came to mind, anything that would ensure that he was kept at arms distance for another hour or another day, but instead he only asked for the time.  It was then that he knew for a fact that he was about as fucked as a guy could get.  He wanted that boy, and not just viscerally--he wanted to sit him down and joke back and forth and toss around stories just to hear his voice.  There was something about this kid, some fleck of steel somewhere down inside of him, that made Collie Parker want to grab him tight and never let go.

            “It’s sometime right around two, I gather.  It’s quiet.  I never figured it could get quiet, what with so many boys all in one big group, but there you have it.  Lord, but it’s quiet out here.”

            Collie shrugged, and he finally started to come down off the last of the jitters from the nightmare.  ‘Course it was quiet.  That’s what the night did.  “The darkness will weed out the last of the fuckers who thought they knew what they were getting into but really didn’t--it’s either going to swallow them alive or spit them out on the other side.  That’s why they’ve all shut the fuck up.  For the first time in their lives they’ve got a real decision to make--to stay or to go.”

            “More philosophical than I figured you could manage,” Abraham said, and there was something vaguely amused under the irate exterior.  He looked like he would have walked away if he had anywhere to go, but he didn’t and there was enough there to keep him from wandering off to be on his own.  Collie grunted, stuffing his freezing fingers deep into his pockets.

            “How about you and Socrates go and fornicate on your philosophy?  I’m just being honest.”

            And there it was, the laugh.  Abraham smiled down at him and Collie wanted to kiss him, wanted to hit him, wanted something more than anything he could possibly have if he asked for the world for his prize.  “God, do you do that on purpose or is it just ingrained in your bastardized genetics?” Abraham asked, his chortles cutting through the cold night air.

            “Just you wait until I get some real vitriol going,” Collie said, and he couldn’t help the corners of his mouth twisting up.  “I can feel it coming.  It’ll be like puking up your guts after a good night drinking.”

            “You’re more self-aware than you let on.”

            Collie sighed, searching for anything in the darkness to look at that wasn’t the eyes, pinpricks of light reflecting little chunks of moonlight, that were focused right on him.  “Might be.  I’m aware that I’m going to hate myself when all this is over.”

            “Why is that?” Abraham asked, and his face was sincere, waiting to see what would come next--the promised vitriol or something more akin to true honesty.

            Neither of them said much of anything as Collie stared at him, soaking in the stilted lines of his body in the darkness.  One kiss--Collie took him by the shoulder, dug one hand in his thick Scandinavian hair, and brought their lips together.

            It wasn’t like kissing the girls at home.  They always seemed to want to go slow, enjoy kissing in light touches.  It wasn’t like the boys, either--they were always rough and uncertain, always afraid of getting caught.  But this kiss wasn’t light or uncertain.  Collie was screaming through this kiss, screaming for everything that had ever gone wrong in his life.  He kissed Abraham like he was a sinner falling into hell, and it only caught Abraham by surprise for a moment before he responded.

            Abraham’s hands, on either side of his jaw, told him that he was safe.  That he could rest his burning muscles.  That they could lie together, unmovable, and that would be that.  The kiss was a cry and a response all in one, and Collie broke it feeling like he needed to gasp in air, needed his lungs full or he was going to implode on himself.

            They could only manage one as they walked without drawing any warnings.

 

            Vitriol.  It tasted good when it came, just like he thought it would.  Collie practically bathed in it as they passed the crowds, the cities getting bigger but still puny, disheveled little things that were hardly worth the dirt they stood on.  He smiled and spit and he felt good, he felt like he had on a solid suit of armor as he waved to the faces that were watching him die, had watched his brother die, were waiting on a thousand more sacrificial deaths.  It felt _good_ to tell them what he really thought of them. 

            He thought of big cats playing with their food, and he figured out of spite that if he got the prize he really would buy everything.  All the mills, all the oil wells, all the farms.  The entire world.  And then he would watch all those faces wailing and begging, and laugh when they finally felt how he felt.  Oh, the joy.

            From across the way he spotted Abraham, and he made an obscene gesture, because why not?  He could still piss off some of these boys, and that was what made it all great.  Abraham flipped him the bird.

            He could have done something else, could have raised his spikes not just for the stupid crowd of spectators but for the boys around him as well.  Except he knew, somehow, that he was already folding.

            It started with Abraham.  It started that first night, in the dark, and now it was spreading.  He kept trying to raise the spikes, kept trying to just fight them and their dead, dying faces, but more and more he found that he just wanted to fall into their rhythms.  He wanted to walk side-by-side with them.  He just... didn’t want any more of them to die.

            So he spent his energy hating the people he still had the guts to hate, and his stomach dropped out when Ray Garraty nearly bought it, and just when he thought he’d split in two and shower the waiting crowd with his blood and offal, he found that Abraham was getting close again.

            “They manage those guns awfully well for being so young, don’t you think?”

            “Guns have got nothing to do with age,” Collie said, still unsure if he was pleased enough at Garraty’s survival to ignore the lancing pain up the back of his calves and the sunburn across the bridge of his nose.  “I was shooting rifles when I was six with my dad and brother, no fucking problem.”

            “Yeah, I guess... but whose bright idea was it to give them carbines?”

            “Carbines are quick loaders.  You’ve got half a second between a kid clawing your eyes out and you shooting him down, you need the ammo fast.”

            “Ah, is that it?  Personally, I’d want something with more range.  Kiss them with lead from a good twenty yards away, like picking fresh raspberries off the bush.”

            “You’d make a shit soldier, Abe, sitting back like that.”

            Abraham laughed.  And there it was--Collie was gone, just like that.

            It was hours--days? Months?--later when Abraham came back, and Collie knew right then that they were pressed right up to the edge.

            “I’ve got something to ask you,” he said, his unshaven face too thin and his eyes too pleading.  “I’m asking everyone about something, but...”

            Collie walked with his hands in his pockets, staring at the lazy new England clouds.  He decided that he could laugh, he could sing, or he could just stand still.  Any of the three would break this moment before it even started.  He couldn’t manage any one of them.  “You want my heart?  I’d give you the damn thing right now if I could just sit the fuck down,” he said, and he knew he wasn’t kidding.

            “No, not... what’s that mean?” Abraham looked at him, looked through his exhaustion and the dusty anger that still clung to him, peering somewhere inside to his soul.

            Collie swallowed everything back.  “Nothing.  Ask it or fuck off.”

            Abraham stayed right at his side.  “I’m asking everyone... not to save anyone else.  You know what I mean?  No musketeers, no heroes.”

            “Do it yourself or don’t do it at all.”

            “Yeah.  That’s good.  That’s exactly it.”

            For a long moment Collie pretended to consider it.  Finally he asked, “Why?”

            And Abraham slid his hand into Collie’s pocket, his pinky finger curling around his palm.  It was only the second time they had ever really touched, but Collie still felt like he would have been biting back tears if he could have unfrozen his eyes from the horizon.  Abraham cleared his throat, coming close until their shoulders were just barely rubbing, their feet swinging in tandem.  “...I can see it in your eyes.  You’d go down to give me a chance.”

            “Me?” Collie scoffed.  “You think I’d swallow a bullet for you?  I knew you had baked ziti for brains, but that’s the dumbest pile of shit I’ve ever seen come out of someone’s mouth.”

            “Collie.”

            “What, you goddamn parasite?  What do you want from me?”

            “I want for you--if you go down at all--to do it because you simply didn’t have anything left.  Not because you could have gone further... and decided not to.  You get it?”

            Collie heard their footsteps all around him, surrounding him like the pulse of some spirit invoked by the motion of their feet.  “I get it,” he said.  “I do.”

 

            Collie Parker felt it when he began to break down.  There were no more spikes--they were all but gone, scraped away by the road itself.  He tried to raise his hackles and all he found was fur: soft, warm, and all-encompassing.  It was then that he knew that he wouldn’t go out cold, like he’d figured.  He wouldn’t pass out in the heat of the damn Maine summer.  He wouldn’t even go down to his knees and eat a bullet, putting his middle fingers up like that would make a difference.  There was no doubt about it now--he cared for these kids.  He’d been won over, at the losing end of the long walk, and now there was nothing he could do about it.  No matter where he walked he felt their footsteps beside him.  No matter what he did he couldn’t imagine walking alone.  He just couldn’t.

            God, he hated that he’d been brought over to their side--why couldn’t he have died like any other fucking walker?  Why couldn’t he have just fallen during that first night?

            The answer was Abraham.  That was the entire reason.  Abraham had been the one to worm under his armor, the one to strip him bare.  It was because of him that he looked around at the others and saw not numbers to walk down but boys, boys as scared as he was the day the long walk started three years ago, as scared as he was to go with his father to pick up his brother from the Major in the thick, black body bag.

            He couldn’t stand to see those guns come down one more time.  It was with something near-relief that he made the decision.

            He didn’t look at number 2 before he took the halftrack on.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers.


End file.
